ESTIMATION OF THE PURE-TONE AUDIOGRAM BY THE AUDITORY BRAIN-STEM RESPONSE - A REVIEW

This review paper briefly considers how stimulus, noise masking and re cording parameters affect the frequency and place specificity of audit ory brainstem responses (ABRs) to air- and bone-conducted stimuli. Iss ues concerning the use of clicks for ABR threshold estimates will firs t be presented, followed by results for tone-evoked ABR thresholds and how well they predict the pure-tone behavioral audiogram. Noise-maski ng options (e.g. high-pass noise, notched noise and white noise) to im prove the frequency specificity of tone-evoked ABRs, which are now ava ilable on clinical ABR units, will also be discussed. The goal of this article is to demonstrate that ABRs to tonal stimuli can be successfu lly recorded in most clinical environments and can provide reasonably accurate estimates of 500- to 4000-Hz pure-tone behavioral thresholds in infants, children and adults, Specific parameters and protocols for obtaining frequency-specific ABR threshold responses are provided.